Castles and Promises for the Future
Chapter forty-five
áINE
Ibarely get the zipper on my dress pulled up before Kieran scoops me off my feet.
I squeak more from surprise than alarm, one arm looping around his neck automatically while he carries me toward the suite door. "What are you doing?"
"Leaving."
"I gathered that." We're supposed to meet mom and the girls for dinner at an undisclosed location.
Mom said the girls picked out the place and it's a surprise.
Kieran's mouth twitches. Barely.
Still, it's a smile and they're coming a lot more often these days. Since he told me he loved me and accepted that I love him too. He's still working on believing I love him for the man he is and not in spite of it, but that's okay.
We have a lifetime for me to show him.
He carries me through the lobby like the six-foot-three Albanian-Irish mountain he is while I smile apologetically at the concierge.
"I'm perfectly capable of walking." But I tighten my arms around his neck.
Yes, I am the reigning queen of mixed messages. And he loves that about me. It makes him smile and that is always a win for me.
"Didn't say you weren't."
It's hard to keep the grin off my face when I pretend to scold him. "You know repeatedly kidnapping your wife probably sends a bad message."
"It sends the right one."
"Oh yeah?" I tease. "What's that?" As if I don't know. But my inner hussy likes hearing it.
So does my heart.
"Mine."
"Saying that should not make me feel squishy inside," I tell him ruefully.
He settles me into the back seat of our good as new armored SUV, and buckles my seat belt himself. "Saying it makes me feel squishy, so I think it's a good thing."
Moments like this, when my taciturn and tarnished hero says sweet stuff in whole sentences fill my heart to overflowing. "I'm so glad Mick sent you to get me that day."
"Me too." The emotion in his voice is a gift I'll never take for granted. "I would hate to have the death of one of my brothers on my conscience if he'd met you first."
His assumption that any man would be as instantly obsessed with me as he was does a lot for my ego. And my ovaries.
When he's buckled in his own seat, Noah at the wheel (because Kieran wants me in the safest seat since the t-bone and I refuse to sit in the back without him), I ask, "Are you going to tell me where we're going?"
"No."
"Where are we going, Noah?" I ask with a saucy look for my husband.
Noah laughs. "It's not worth what would happen to me if I told you."
"Kieran isn't going to punish you for telling me," I say with false conviction.
Everyone in this car knows that might well be a lie.
"I wasn't talking about the boss. Your girls would kill me dead for ruining their surprise."
My grin is back. Because I'm happy.
So very happy.
Nevertheless, I manage a pout when I say, "I feel communication has broken down in this marriage."
"No, you don't." Kieran's eyes sparkle.
Sparkle! With humor. The guy Ellie thought didn't know how to smile.
"You don't get to tell me how I feel," I snark, repeating one of our family edicts.
"I do if you're being a brat and pretending to feel something you don't," he counters, gaze still filled with humor.
"I love you, Kieran Veseli. Even if you won't tell me where we're going."
"I love you áine Veseli, even if you nag me about it the whole way there."
I don't. I ask him what he thinks about my plan to upgrade the inventory software for one of the businesses under his authority.
We're still debating the merits of bringing in a civilian firm to do the updates (because I'm not a civilian anymore, am I?) when Noah turns down a quiet tree-lined street. The well-maintained homes built in another century are charming and the front yards are lush and green.
One house has a cement pad with a basketball hoop to the side of the driveway and a group of teens are playing basketball. Children ride their bikes while their parents relax on front porches watching, or doing yardwork.
No one living in these houses is struggling to get by, but the street still has a comfortable family vibe. Rich people might live here, but they're not the Allison and Kenneth Shaughnessy kind.
These homes are beautiful, but they're not show pieces. This neighborhood is lived in.
My gaze catches on a pale blue Queen Anne near the end of the street. With its white trim and a round turret rising from one corner, it looks plucked right out of a fairytale. The Disney kind. Not the original Brothers Grimm.
The flowerbeds that line the driveway and walk to the front door bloom with color, completing the fairytale picture.
"What a pretty house," I say a little wistfully.
Kieran looks out the window. "Which one?"
"The blue Queen Anne."
He smiles. Like full on with teeth and everything smiles. "I like it too."
"Someday, maybe we'll have a house like that." Not that houses like it come on the market all that often.
Yes, I do browse real estate listings. Okay, that's a fairly new hobby, but Kieran wants to move into a house and I'm getting closer to saying, "Let's go for it."
If this house had shown up on any of the sites I spend too much time scrolling on, I might have already said it.
Noah slows the SUV and pulls into the drive of the house my heart is lusting after.
I blink.
Then blink again. "What are we doing here?"
Before either Kieran or Noah can answer, the front door bursts open. Joy comes flying down the steps so fast I expect her to tumble headfirst into the flowerbeds.
"Mom!" She's loud enough I hear her through the closed windows.
Sadie and Neeve are right behind her, both of them grinning from ear to ear. Mom's there too, her hands folded in front of her, looking both benevolent and stern.
Her expression says, "Do not ruin this for your girls."
As if I would. Whatever this is. Though, not being a stupid woman, I have a pretty darn good idea. I turn slowly toward Kieran.
His eyes are fixed on me and nowhere else. "Want to see it?"
Questions pile up in my head until I don't know which one to ask first. So, I simply nod.
We get out of the car and that seems to be Joy's signal to launch herself at me like a rocket. "Mom! Mom! We're going to live in Cinderella's castle!"
Laughing helplessly, I catch her before she knocks me backward. "What?"
"The castle!" She points dramatically at the turret. "We're going to live there!"
My gaze lifts back to the house. I can absolutely see how she thinks it's a castle. But live here?
I turn my head to look a Kieran. "You bought a house? You agreed the girls would help us pick one out," I remind him in a dazed voice.
"They did."
My stomach flips. That's as good as telling me he bought this amazing house. For us.
"It was our idea," Sadie says, like she's confessing something.
"Not to have me come along to look at houses with you?" I ask, trying to figure out why.
Sadie rolls her eyes. "No. To move."
Like that should have been obvious to me.
"I was the one that suggested Kieran surprise you," mom offers, joining us. "You and I both know you would have hemmed and hawed until Joy started high school otherwise."
She is not wrong. Not in theory anyway. Change has never been my favorite thing and since Brady and dad's deaths, I cling to the familiar like a woman who can't swim holding onto a life raft in the middle of the Atlantic.
Since Troy's death, it's only gotten worse.
We should have moved to a bigger apartment a long time ago. Mom offered to pay the lion's share of the rent. Claiming that wasn't fair, I refused.
Only it wasn't about being fair.
It was about being safe.
Now, Kieran is offering me a dream of a house and my fear is battling with the delight reflected on my mom and daughters' faces.
"There's room for all of us." Neeve reaches for my hand and tugs toward the house. "It's a good change, mom."
A little vise of mom love tightens around my heart and I let my middle daughter pull me forward.
Joy throws both hands into the air. "Yay! Dad says we're his princesses so we get to live in a castle."
I glance toward Kieran. He shrugs.
Of course, he said something perfect like that. Because my husband of few words has the best ones when it counts.
Joy grabs my other hand and skips beside me. "You have to see my room."
"My room is so pretty," Sadie says with as much enthusiasm as Joy, if not as much volume. No feigned preteen insouciance present.
"What about you, Neeve, do you like your room?" Am I accepting this move as a done deal?
Do I really have a choice?
If I hated the house. If I really didn't want to move, yes. But it's time to start living bigger in my own life. It started after I married Kieran but making good changes can't stop at a new job and falling in love.
That very love demands I step out in faith.
That I trust my knight in matte black tactical gear not to leave.
Joy points toward where Noah has joined Dagda near the front door. Both men aren't even trying to pretend they aren't watching us with avid interest.
"Dad says castles need dragons to guard them." She beams. "He already hired ours. And they have their own house!" She points at the one next door.
Kieran bought two houses? So we'd have security on site but still be able to live in a family friendly neighborhood, not to mention a castle?
"I don't breathe fire before my morning coffee," Noah deadpans.
Dagda sighs dramatically. "I've been demoted from elite operator to dragon."
Joy and Neeve giggle.
"Not sure that's a demotion," I say wryly.
"Pretty sure it's not," Sadie adds, her preteen snark in full evidence now.
Kieran's hand settles against the small of my back and I let that familiar touch ground me as we go inside the house.
The front door opens onto a formal entry. But there's a shoe bench and hooks for coats on the wall instead of expensive artwork. Sunlight pours in through the windows on either side of the door, the Queen Anne grilles casting lines of shadows over polished hardwood floors.
The entryway opens to a formal living room off to the right and a staircase to the second floor ahead and to the left, with a hallway to the back of the house to the right of it.